2023 GOTY (You edition!)

[Timeline_man]

Game of the Year award shows are largely tests of popularity, which makes sense for what they are, but also that's boring.
So, I wanna know Your Game of the Year, and if you feel like talking about it, why

Applying the rule that the game had to have come out this year, my options are pretty limited, I really only played like 3 games that came out this year, so I gotta go with the Funky Fresh Platformer: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. I had been anticipating this successor to Jet Set Radio for way too long, and I absolutely binged my way through the game, adding new songs to my own playlists along the way. The vibes, the platforming feel, and the level design had me hooked from hour 1.

 

[TRIDIUM]

Well, for me, it has to go to Lies of P.
I haven't had that much fun in years. Really sad it didn't make it.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

The only 2023 game I played was Storyteller, a mobile game by Netflix. It is actually very good, but at some point the game broke and there is no fix.

I saw people play it on youtube and I really liked to play it too, but I couldn't find it in the app store. Turned out you need a Netflix account to play. Which I have, but to watch show, not to pka games. So I never looked st the games before. Or since.

Its a very enjoyable mobile game, so I would like to nominate Storyteller for the mobile catagory.

Here is a random youtuber showing how it is played:

 

[bgillisp]

I always have the rule my game of the year has to be a game I played for the first time in that year, NOT the game came out in that year. Sooooo

For me barring a game that blows me away in the last few weeks, it is Root Double

That is a visual novel that came out a few years ago but I finally played it this year and really liked it.

My runner up is This way Madness Lies.

I don't think I've actually played much at all released in 2023 either. Watch my 2024 game of the year will be Half Life 2 haha.

 

[Sword_of_Dusk]

I didn't actually play many new releases this year. Only three, actually. Of those three, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is far and away my pick.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

Oh wait... i played hogwards lagacy. That was this year still, right? At least for PS4. I've spend more time waiting for it to come out then I spend playing it... a bit of a disappointment.

One thing really bothered me. NPCs only had dialogue if they were a quest target or a vendor. All kids, all teacher, all wizards in town, they just ignore you, no matter what you do.

It is a fun game, but not the open world RPG it promised to be. Hardly an RPG at all.

 

[AquaEcho]

The only new game I played this year was Pikmin 4. It was pretty good though.

 

[Seacliff]

Played a number of titles this year, including a number of the big ones. Might as well talk about the big games of 2023 here because I don't see myself doing it elsewhere.

Spoiler: Hi-Fi Rush

I'm surprised not to see more Hi-Fi Rush in these kind of discussions, given how much buzz it had at the beginning of the year. I'm not even a big character action fan, so it's not my personal pick, but the presentation of that game is superb. It feels like a game straight out of the early 2000s that still takes advantage of modern hardware. Comic Book inspired visuals is one of my favorite in video games.

Spoiler: Tears of the Kingdom

I'm a lot more critical of this game than most others on this list.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the direction of Breath of the Wild, so Tears of the Kingdom didn't click with me either. In fact, I think it's inferior. The Depths are effectively procedurally generated given it's just the topography of the overworld inverted, and the sky islands feel very hallow given how much focus they are given in the marketing, seeing them effectively copy/paste islands was also disapointing. The game as a whole felt like spitballed undercooked additions to the already existed BOTW world.

The physics engine is impressive, and the ultra hand mechanic can be very fun to use, but game never demands you do much with it beyond the most basic contraptions. I had a lot more fun watching Youtube compalations of what people built in the game than playing the game myself.

I could go on for hours on my disapointments of the characters, story, dungeons, etc. But I'll end it on a more positive note: If you love BOTW and it's Physics, you'll probably still love this game, and you probably played it already.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy 16

It's really hard to talk about FF16, I didn't expect it to be as divisive as it was, but in retrospect I probably should've. Many people are firmly against Final Fantasy games being Action RPGs, and I kind of get it. Hell, FF16's RPG elements are so minimal to the gameplay loop it could get away not calling itself an RPG. The Game of Throne inspirations was also off-putting for me. All of that said, I still really liked the game. The story and characters still felt more "Final Fantasy" to me than any other numbered entry compared to the past decade, though what that means varies from person to person. For me, it was enough to do every sidequest in the game and not feel like my time was being wasted. Not being able to visit major cities outside of scripted sequences is a trend from 13 and 15 I would like to move on from.

Spoiler: Pikmin 4

A few months before this game's release, I played through Pikmin 1, 2, and 3 for the first time. 4 is increadibly cozy, which follows more in the style of 3 and isn't nessacrly how I would describe the GameCube entries. For all the talk of Dandori in the game, a massive chunk of it doesn't really encourage it much outside of specific challanges. Whatever that's good or bad is probably going to depend if you prefer Pikmin 3 or Pikmin 2 respectably. But regardless of what someone may want it to be, Pikmin 4 is an increadibly polished action/adventure game that is very much worth 100%-ing.

Spoiler: Baulder's Gate 3

I been playing Baulder's Gate 3 back in it's early access release over three years ago. The visuals, characters, and story for that game are very solid. So it should be noted that most of my distaste for it stem from my issues with DnD 5e and the Forgotten Realms setting. Though it's actually really cool to see adventure lines from multiple editions like 2e's "How the Mighty Are Fallen" have a significant role within the events of the story.

Spoiler: Mario Wonder

Mario Wonder isn't paticularly new or original, but it does finally break the decades of unispired New Super Mario Bros game and brings us something that finally feels like a sequel to Super Mario World rather than reimagining Mario 3 for a fifth time. There wasn't a level less than good in this game. It's short, but it's a very consisntly good short, and like Pikmin 4 is worth 100%-ing. While the main game is easy, the special world does have some challanging levels for those who are looking for it.

With all the big publisher offerings out of the way, if I were to pick my prefered GOTY 2023, it would probably be Pseudoregalia. The mechanical premise for that game is simple yet extremely effective: take Mario 64 and split up a lot of the actions of that game into powerups distrubuted across the game world. The Platforming challanges of this game fit a perfect mix of being challanging, while allowing a large number of viable actions or chains of actions at any given time.

The game's lack of a map or minimap that shows your location is going to turn off a lot of players, but for me was a brilliant decision. Building a mental map of how locations intricately tie together is something that is treated as archaic in modern video games that I would love to see more often.